


Cloning (In Theory)

by cherrycola94



Category: Batman and Robin (Comics), DCU, DCU (Comics), Red Robin (Comics), Robin (Comics), Superboy (Comics), Teen Titans (Comics), Young Justice (Comics), Young Justice - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst and Romance, Character Death, Clones, Death, Heavy Angst, M/M, fellas is it gay to clone your best friend and be destroyed by his absence???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 08:14:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29947080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherrycola94/pseuds/cherrycola94
Summary: "THUD" is the sweet sound of metal against wood. Tim reaches over to the small ax he brought along and uses all his might to split the lid open. With every swing of the ax, he feels the aching in his heart dull a bit more.Kon will be back.Soon.
Relationships: Tim Drake & Dick Grayson, Tim Drake & Kon-El | Conner Kent, Tim Drake/Kon-El | Conner Kent
Comments: 7
Kudos: 13





	Cloning (In Theory)

**Author's Note:**

> DIGGING GRAVES IS HARD!!! IT'S SO HARD!!! IT TAKES SO LONG!!!! AND IT MAKES ME ACHE SO MUCH!!!! this has been a psa

**The primary method of human cloning is called somatic cell nuclear transfer, more commonly known as SCNT. This procedure was first successful in the year 1996 using adult somatic cell and the process of nuclear transfer to create Dolly the Finnish Dorset sheep--**

With each strike of the shovel to the ground, Tim’s adrenaline increases by tenfold.

“You’re so messed up,” Tim tells himself when he realizes how… _excited_ he feels at the thought of seeing his best friend’s dead body again. “This is insane.” His headphones start slipping off the back of his sweaty head, so he stops digging to adjust them properly. The playlist Kon made him once upon a time acts as soothing background music-- something to drown out while he focused on the task at hand.

His muscles burn like they’re being dipped into acid, but he wills himself to keep up the pace. When his hands start to ache, he rips off the sleeves of his shirt using his safehouse keys and he wraps the fabric around the shaft of the shovel. It’s not the perfect form of protection, but it helps a bit with the blistering.

“C’mon,” Tim mutters in between breaths. “Almost there.” The hole was about five feet deep and six feet long right now, the result of almost seven hours of digging. It might take a whole other hour for him to dig in his zombie-like state of exhaustion, but he kept pushing himself.

“He’s waiting,” Tim tells himself whenever he starts to slow down. “He’s waiting for you.” And the thought of Kon suffocating in his coffin under all that dirt energizes him. The black dress shirt he wore to the funeral sticks to his back despite the cool autumn weather, and he wipes droplets of sweat out of his eyes with the back of his muddy hand. He digs his shovel deeper into the ground, his arms screaming for a break until

_THUD._

The sweet sound of metal against wood. Tim reaches over to the small ax he brought along and uses all his might to split the lid open. With every swing of the ax, he feels the aching in his heart dull a bit more.

Kon will be back.

Soon.

**\--SCNT begins when a doctor extracts an egg cell from a female specimen and removes the nucleus, creating an enucleated egg. Then a cell (one containing DNA from the specimen which will be cloned) is extracted from the specimen being cloned--**

Glass is beautiful, in Tim’s opinion.

Easy to break, but under certain circumstances it was extraordinarily strong. As transparent as water, as opaque as brick. Weaponized when broken and put on displays when perfect. It could be shaped into anything or swept away into trash as discordant shards.

Glass was what the display was made of. It held a very pale Kon upright, connecting him to a network of wires and generators.

It was hard for Tim. Seeing Kon like that.

**\--The two cells are fused together in an electrical process. This will create an embryo, which will be implanted into a female through in vitro fertilization, or into an appropriate incubator--**

He doesn’t want it to end like this.

God, if he could do anything else but this.

The shard of Kryptonite in his hand is too light as he holds it up to the defect’s nose. Something this lethal should weigh more. It should feel like holding death in your hands or the weight of a whole lifetime. Not just some stupid little rock lifted from a vault in the Bat Cave.

He turns away as he hears its screams. He can’t watch it die. He can’t look at it all again. The body lands with a sickening sense of finality against the floor and it makes Tim feel like throwing up.

“Kon,” Tim’s vision is so blurred by tears he can’t see the original clone’s face. His voice sounds quiet and watery, so he clears his throat and tries again, stepping closer to the glass case.

“I’ll do it right,” He whispers, hands sweaty and shaking. He places a open palm flat against the glass, over Kon's heart. “I-- I’ll get it right next time. I swear on my life.”

His forehead presses against the glass. He can feel the sweat sticking to the pristine surface.

"I swear it on you."

**\--If the procedure ends successfully, the clone should be born at the end of a normal pregnancy timeline from the date it was fertilized or incubated. However, the success rate for this type of procedure is small, working in only one or two out of every hundred embryos--**

Tim decides to put on a song. It had been quite a few days since he’d listened to music, and he missed the sound of Kon’s playlist around him.

He pulls out his phone and scrolls by The Clash, Green Day, and then down to the first song added. He stares at it-- the song that played at the ending of Fight Club, the film they watched together on the team’s first movie night. Kon had smacked him on the shoulder and made Tim Google the name so he could save it.

_Where is my mind?_ The song title asks him, glowing in white letters as haunting as the two-note riff sung at the beginning. Tim had no answer to the question it posed.

Tim presses _PLAY._

Tim sweeps his shaggy hair behind his ears and hums along with the tune as the cloning process restarts. The machine beeps, once red, twice red, thrice red. Tim opens up the hormonal spreadsheet he created to calculate a few adjustments. He turns a few knobs, adds carefully measured drops from different test tubes, and then clicks _ENTER_ again. He waits, and the light shines a glorious green.

He grins and starts singing out loud with the song.

Kon’s song.

**\--A good percentage of clones have been born with many defects. Some of those include, but are not limited to; defective hearts, lung issues, types one and two diabetes, various blood vessel complications, malfunctioning immune systems… ect--**

Dick calls him one day. Tim’s phone refuses to come off of the speakerphone, so he puts it into his pocket to muffle the sound and carry around. It’s like having a miniature version of his brother. He almost giggles at the idea of a three-inch tall Dick Grayson. 

“What’re you up to, Tim?” Dick asks in his usual cheery voice.

“Some… experiments,” Tim closes his laptop. For all he knew, Dick could have a camera secretly installed in here. Watching him while he worked.

“Look, I-- I have to ask,” Dick laughs a little. “I’m just a little confused right now.”

“Ask away,”

“Do you remember what happened after the funeral?” Dick asks, rather quickly. Meaning he’d been treating this thought like a case for quite some time. Watching, thinking, micro-analyzing whatever Tim had been doing the past few days.

Tim’s heart starts pounding against his ribcage. He can _feel_ his pulse grow stronger in his neck.

“So you know about it,” He says, his voice dangerously low.

“All I know is that you dug Kon out and that Bruce found you driving to one of your safehouses,” Dick says it like a fact, but it was a lie. Tim didn’t see Bruce at all. If he saw Bruce-- or if Bruce saw him-- he’d be talking a shrink for most of his waking hours and Kon would be back in his coffin. “Where do you th-- where are you?”

“Nowhere,” Tim replies. “You won’t find me.”

“Alright, I believe that,” Dick says. “But look, you had a whole breakdown.” Dick said, concern very obvious in his tone. “You don’t remember _anything?”_

“I didn’t have a breakdown,” Tim grits his teeth. “Look, if you want to know if I’m alright you can just _ask._ You don’t have to try and trick me into talking about my feelings.”

“You’re cloning Kon,” Dick says. Tim feels his eyes water, but he doesn’t dare let himself cry. Not while he was on call, and now while he was working. “This isn’t-- Timmy, this is artificial happiness. Not to mention, it’s a bit of a stretch.”

“Well, the _real_ happiness I felt back then… it’s like a-- a prison cell now,” Tim wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “It’s got me locked away, and I don’t have the key.”

“What could be a key?” Dick asks, impossibly gentle. It almost made Tim cry.

“Kon,” Tim states, the lump in his throat growing. “Kon was my key, Dick.”

**\--After all, Dolly the sheep was the end product of two hundred and seventy-seven previously failed attempts. And even that specimen was a failure.**

Tim’s eyes don’t leave the computer until he hears the _ding_ from the pod and the creak of the door opening. The first test of capability. Simple, but complicated enough to tell Tim if he was functional enough to operate the latch locks on the inside.

A damp foot stepped out onto the floor and there he was, just like he dreamed of; Conner the Kryptonian clone boy.

He stood at exactly 5’8”. He wore a look of amused interest on his face. His hair was black and cut perfectly into his classic fade cut. His eyes were blue; not green, not brown, but _blue._ The gene had finally come through.

Tim walked up to him in disbelief and touched his cheek. Soft skin with a slight scrape of stubble. “You’re… _perfect.”_

“You’re… Tim?” Kon asked.

“Yeah,” Tim’s eyes pricked with tears. “Yeah, it’s me.” He boosted himself up onto his tiptoes. His nose was almost touching Kon’s.

“Tim, I’m not-- I’m not here,” Kon frowned and stepped away from him.

Tim started smiling. He expected Kon to be a little confused, but that meant he remembered what happened. The consciousness upload was a success!“ No, see, you died. But now you’re here bec--”

“No, Tim,” Kon said firmly. “Do you really think you can clone someone this well?”

Tim blinked. “Well, yeah?”

Kon laughed, loudly and off-key. The laugh sounded plain wrong, especially coming out of Kon’s mouth. It was too… far away, too saturated. “Look around, Timmy. You’re not where you think you are.”

“Yeah, right. I’m not,” Tim said sarcastically as he turned on his heel, ready to point out the contents of the little lab he had created only to realise that everything had… vanished?

The makeshift steel bed frame he had been recklessly throwing papers onto was made of thick wood, dressed in with crisp sheets and bolted firmly down to the floor. The lights weren’t a dim white like he remembered programming with his armband, but a headache-inducing yellow color reflecting off of the eggshell walls. The “laptop” he carried around turned out to be a paperback copy of _Jane Eyre._ He looked down to his chest to the Red Robin costume he swore he’d been wearing for the past week, and saw nothing but a faded Gotham High tee that once belonged to Dick and a pair of baggy sweatpants with a stretchy waist. There was no human-sized container for Kon’s body, only a thin door leading into a small closet full of more soft clothes and blue hospital gowns. He reaches into his pocket and his phone isn’t in there.

“No,” Tim’s voice was caught on the lump in his throat. “No!” He looked up at the ceiling. “You--” He grabbed his hair in a fist and tugged it in rage pacing around the room. His eyes landed on the copy of _Jane Eyre,_ and he threw against the wall with all the anger he held in his body. “You _idiot!”_ The spine of the book made a loud _CRACK_ noise, the pages fluttering open on impact and folding into ugly shapes when it landed on the floor. Tim looked around the room for more items to destroy, but instead found a camera nestled into the upper right corner of the ceiling. Anger crashes down onto the top of his head for a moment, and then it washes away like a wave at the beach. He straightens his posture.

“I was happy,” He says loudly and as calmly as he can, looking directly into the lens. His hands want to shake with the crazed energy coursing through them, but he holds them as still as he can.

Nobody responds to his claim over a mic, but the red light still blinks lethargically. Recording. Storing data for future reference. He wasn’t the scientist here; he was only the _experiment._ “I was actually pretty happy, for once.”

It’s at that exact moment when he realizes that while all these people are watching his every move, he’ll truly be alone.

**Author's Note:**

> also fun fact: you’re allowed to wear civvies in certain psych wards, just as long as they’re comfortable and can't potentially be used to harm yourself. (buttons, cords, beads ect.) a tee and sweatpants without a drawstring are perfect examples


End file.
